Tom Coghlan

Iran has accused America of killing two of its fighters in Iraq, an accusation that further complicates the campaign against Islamic State being waged by unlikely allies. A US drone strike killed two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard around the city of Tikrit on March 23, the paramilitary

Iran is close to putting its forces on Israel’s northeast border for the first time, as its allies crush rebel groups in the Golan Heights area of Syria. The prospect of Iranian troops being posted on a frontier that has been calm for decades is causing alarm in Israel, and comes as international

The battle to recapture Tikrit descended into a bitter power struggle between Washington and Tehran yesterday, as about 10,000 Iranian-backed militiamen announced that they would withdraw from the fighting in protest against US involvement. Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah were two of the

Britain is to send troops to the Middle East to train Syrian rebels in the fight against Islamic State, the government announced yesterday, as RAF aircraft bombed jihadist strongholds in Iraq. Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, said that 75 British servicemen would be involved in the joint

A rocket salvo that killed 11 Gazan children and hit a hospital on a Muslim religious holiday was the work of Palestinian militants hitting their own people, a report has found, in a damning indictment of Hamas’s conduct during last summer’s war with Israel. The explosion at the Al-Shati refugee

Thousands of Afghan women chanted “Down with ignorance!” as they marched through Kabul yesterday, some with faces daubed in fake blood, to demand action over the mob killing of a woman in the capital last week. Farkhunda, 27, was beaten, thrown from a roof, run over with a car and — believed dead

Britain is set to boost its defences around the Falklands amid efforts by the Argentine government to purchase advanced fighter aircraft. Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, said yesterday that the UK would send more helicopters to the islands and overhaul its other defences in the face of

President Assad of Syria has dismissed two of his intelligence chiefs after a brawl between the men, reportedly over the role of Iran-backed militias in Syria’s civil war. General Rustom Ghazaleh, the feared chief of the Political Security Agency, is said to be in a criticial condition in

Binyamin Netanyahu entered the campaign riding high in the polls, but ended it fighting a bitter rearguard action and accusing foreign governments of seeking to unseat him. Even by the rough-and-tumble standards of Israeli politics, it was a no-holds-barred contest. With the left-of-centre Zionist

Israel’s hawkish prime minister won a clear victory last night in a poll that will bitterly disappoint many European leaders and the Obama administration. Binyamin Netanyahu, whose opposition to talks with Iran has infuriated the White House and who rejects a two-state solution with the